


prayers

by 5_0_5



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Castiel's POV, Drabble, Guardian Angel Castiel, John winchester's awful parenting, Kinda?, LET'S FIND OUT, Loss of Faith, M/M, Soft Castiel, dean winchesters emotional issues, falling in love through prayers, meet cute, or heaven had no plan for him?, what if dean was never meant as michaels vessel?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 08:28:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27680089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/5_0_5/pseuds/5_0_5
Summary: castiel is an angel and he knows dean winchester in a way no other does.he hears dean's prayers. they're scarce, very rarely in dean's life will he pray. castiel can count them on one human hand.and he falls in love with them.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Kudos: 58





	prayers

**Author's Note:**

> au where heaven had no special plan for the winchester's !!! cas is a big ol softie  
> also I will be from here on out pretending like season 15 never happened 😌 fuck cwspn

_dean winchester_ is the name told to little monster children at night. when kids are being tucked in, warned of the boogeyman, the monsters are told of dean winchester.

the man who could kill god if he wanted. 

hunters who know him hold the winchester name close. many last words have been _"wait til the winchester finds you."_

and the winchester always does. even the angels know the name, and they haven't walked the earth since before his bloodline started. 

castiel is an angel and he knows dean winchester in a way no other does.

he hears winchester's prayers. they're scarce, very rarely in dean's life will he pray. castiel can count them on one human hand.

one, he is 9 years old. the winchester home has been razed to the ground, heaven has just welcomed mary winchester, and dean has just been handed his baby brother and told to protect him. dean holds him tight and prays. _keep him safe, please keep him safe safe safe i can't lose him i can't never again, please keep him safe. let me keep him safe._ he prays hard and castiel thinks he's praying for his father who's just run into a burning house. it takes castiel meeting dean to realize he was praying for sam.

two, dean is 16, sam is 12 and he is sick. dean is kneeling by sam's bed with a shotgun on the floor next to him and he feels so angry. they have no money and john isn't due back for a couple weeks at least and dean grabs his brother's burning hand and he prays so angrily it almost feels like a demand. _if you take him away from me you'll regret it. don't you dare take him away from me, not now, not ever, you hear me? heal him, make him better or i swear i'll find you wherever you're hiding and kill you. kill you myself, god._

castiel doesn't know what to think of that one. sam's fever worsens before it breaks and castiel can feel the moment dean's faith breaks. he is 16 and his brother is finally free of his fever and dean walks outside of their stuffy motel and looks at the sky with such reverent anger.

_you'd better hope i'm right about you not being real. if you're out there and you heard me and you let me think he was dead, there's gonna be hell to pay._

dean is so full of righteous anger and hurt that the first moment he thinks something let him down, all his faith washed out. it took his brother getting sick from staying out in the rain and a fever getting worse just before it broke to break what little faith dean had left after his mother.

dean winchester is a fragile, fragile man. one moment and it'll all come down around you.

third, dean is 21. his brother has just left for college and dean is nursing bruises from an angry father when he sighs. and his eyes close tight enough to hurt and his brain is such a mess it takes a long time for castiel to really hear his prayer.

it isn't angry, like he expects. it doesn't curse his brother or feed his anger. _you keep him fucking safe. you make sure he never forgets what we taught him and you make him fucking happy or so help me i will hunt you down. i will hunt you down._ dean repeats the last phrase, never quite finding his _and_. for the first time in castiel's very long life, he believes the human. if anyone could hunt down an angel, it would be dean winchester. castiel wonders what dean would say if he knew he was the one with the angel, and sam wasn't. 

castiel thinks he would try and raze heaven to the ground. castiel doesn't quite think dean could do it, not yet. not until he meets him.

last, dean is 26. he has just lost his father and he is on his knees on the concrete, blood dripping off his face and his hands and the man he was in a fight with is being dragged away, unconscious. dean looks up at the sky and the stars and there is a heavy silence that feels like prayer.

it feels like finality. it feels like dean is saying _you're not real and you never have been. i'm not a child anymore and i know it now._

this is the first time castiel has felt hopelessness from dean, like the last crumbs of his faith have been washed away. castiel thinks dean is a blunt instrument now. dulled down from beating after beating. 

castiel will never stop thinking dean is a blunt instrument, he only learns that it doesn't mean anything about dean himself. 

after all, what is an axe to do when you only ever use it, never sharpen it? 

john winchester is on a hunt and he doesn't come home and dean knows he should find his brother but he can't, he won't, he repeats it so much like a prayer that castiel hears it loud and clear. 

for the first time, castiel wonders what dean's destined for. he wishes he never knew, once he knows. 

dean's destined to die on a hunt gone wrong, alone and scared yet accepting in his final moments. he'll be 34 and on his knees in the dirt and he'll kill the creature that got him and he won't have the energy to fight and try to get himself help.

he will be on his knees in the dirt and caked in his own blood and pull out his phone with shaky hands, dial sam's number and when sam doesn't answer in his final moments, dean will smile. look up at the stars, and he'll say,

" _heya sammy, i know it's been a while since i've called but_ ," dean will try his best not to but he coughs, it's thick and won't take much to realize that blood is clogging up his throat, " _i just wanted to tell you. i love you, man. you're my brother and you ain't never stopped, you're my family and i really hope you're happy. hope you,_ " he coughs again, rougher this time, and when he speaks his voice is weaker, " _hope you get your white picket fence and your big ole dog that you love. hope you settle down and have kids that never know about this life, that are safe. i love you, brother._ "

dean won't get to hang up before his hand loses strength and drops his phone. before his last breath leaves his lungs and he collapses, already going cold from the night air. 

sam will listen to the voicemail the next morning in his bathroom while jess sleeps in their bed. he will hear dean thump against the ground and he'll panic and call bobby, who answers on the fourth ring.

" _dean, hes_ -" sam will say but bobby will already know. bobby will find his body and salt and burn it, and sam will cry a long hour over his grave. 

it is the ending castiel knows dean is terribly scared of.

and castiel?

he falls. he watches it and for the first time in such a long life, he feels a terrible sense of injustice. 

for the first time, he questions his father. _what god makes a man suffer this? a man who never asked for it?_

he is terribly angry. so.

he falls.

he is the first angel to leave heaven in so long and he takes the body of jimmy novak who gives it to him willingly and he finds dean.

dean, who is 26 and is days before he loses his father to the thing that killed his mother and hasn't yet felt that hopelessness. hasn't yet said his final prayer. 

dean is breathing heavy after taking out a nest of vampires and castiel, in a flutter of his wings, drops down behind him. this has already changed things. dean was never supposed to meet castiel, never supposed to know.

"dean winchester," castiel says softly and dean startles, swinging a machete at castiel that just barely misses, "i am your angel."

in hindsight, far into a future neither of them expect now, it will be a joke. it will be funny and ridiculous and yet when the nights are cold and castiel is holding dean, dean will whisper to castiel _say it again_ and castiel will rest his hand on deans jaw like he's not sure he's worthy to touch and say _i am your angel. yours alone._ and dean will smile, kiss the palm of castiel's hands like he never would consider castiel unworthy to touch him and say _my angel._

but now, in the present, dean laughs a mean sort of laugh and draws his gun and shoots castiel straight in the heart. 

this, too, will become funny in the dry humor way that castiel will develop. he will joke, _i listened to your prayers and you shot me in the heart_ or when people ask how they met dean will quirk a charming smile and say _well, i shot him in the heart_ and wink.

now, castiel looks down curiously at the bullet hole in jimmy's heart that assures jimmy will be dead if castiel ever leaves his body. he looks back up at dean and eyes that make him think of the first sunset he ever saw over a field of grass in the wind. it will make his heart catch in his throat but he will not have the words to describe it for a long, long time.

"what are you?" dean demands and castiel is at once reminded of dean's faith. rather, his lack thereof.

"i am an angel of the lord," he answers primly and his wings flutter back behind him and cast a shadow from the moon onto the ground and trees. dean falters.

"an angel of the lord? really?" he sounds angry. castiel will learn to realize that while dean sounds angry, he is simply upset. simply confused.

castiel nods, "yes. i," he falters for the first time, his expression twisting just a fraction, "i don't like your destiny, dean winchester, i want to change it."

dean will ask castiel much later on what his destiny was, then, and castiel will always fight to not tell him. but castiel will get stripped of his angel grace and he and dean will be but humans together. he will tell dean in clipped, solemn words what dean was destined for and dean will take a deep breath, and throw his head back to laugh. _sounds about right_ , he says, _thanks, cas._ cas nods, and smiles just a little.

now, dean will fight castiel every mile of the road they share before he finally lets himself find happiness.

john winchester still dies, castiel is too late to stop it, but he stops many other things that happen.

and that is enough, he thinks. 

it is enough that he gets to hold dean's face in his hands and know what it feels like to love so deeply and fully that it consumes all that you are. 

and he knows what it feels like to be so proud of that love that he would never, ever go back. 

dean winchester is 27 and then he turns 35 and castiel learns what it feels like to breathe when he isn't crushingly scared of losing dean. it never lifts fully, but dean turns 35 in a world he was never destined to and it means so much to castiel that he never gets tired of remembering dean's birthdays as they come.

**Author's Note:**

> and they live happily ever after as regular hunters who eventually get to settle down and retire and dean introduces sam and cas by taking cas to sam's college graduation and you can rip that from my cold dead hands  
> find my on my completely unrelated twt @/yoonieyoonz and my tumblr, which is slightly more related, @/yoongi-gummies


End file.
